Reply #8: Uhhhh...

[NV1962]

First off, sorry for not posting in Spanish, but I think the point you make is interesting enough for a larger audience.

I think there's much to be said in favor of cautioning against pegging too much on so-called "cultural" bonds when it's mostly a common language. But I also believe that it's a rather narrow take, when one applies such a strictly linguistic approach to the case of "the Spanish speaking world" (which, by the way, also extends to Equatorial Guinea and the conflicted territory formerly known as Spanish Sahara).

The painful colonial past has left a nasty aftertaste - I think we can easily agree to that.

I also believe it's just as much reasonable to assert that the ties among Spanish speaking countries (although I feel that Portugal and Brazil are just as much "partners" in that culturally close cluster) go way beyond "mere" language. Something that may surprise non-Spanish speakers is that Spanish, as is the case with French, has an "authoritative" body that oversees the common heritage, in a collegial manner (i.e., the broader Association of Spanish Academies comprises twenty-one national members who jointly "decide" in governing the corpus of Spanish language. One of the most interesting and more tangible results of this cross-fertilization effort is the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary or DPD (which can be consulted on-line) that spells out the differences in "regional" usage of this language.

Such a common and quite horizontally organized effort is a remarkable example of "open" intra-national collaboration; all the more interesting is that, regional lexical differences (i.e. expressions) aside, there is no difference whatsoever in spelling. Unlike, for example, English where US English and UK English have differences in spelling of exactly the same words (e.g. color/colour, -ise/-ize, etc.) aside from regional lexical differences (e.g. truck/lorry). For me, this is an indicator that it's not "just" a language bond, but a comparatively very strong one at that.

Then, there's a more broad interpretation of "culture". Authors in literature, but also in pop culture (especially in music, but also movies) tend to have a strong cross-over appeal. Let's put it this way: anyone asserting that "because" a given artist is, for example, an Argentinian or Cuban or Mexican citizen, he or she most likely can't have success on the other side of the ocean, is either an idiot, ignorant, or a deliberate troublemaker. Of course, the same possible cross-over appeal goes the other way as well; Shakira is just as big in Spain, as in her home country. And Alejandro Sanz is quite popular in the Americas, as well.

For another example, and if one takes a look at administrative, political and even judicial customs, one can easily spot coincidences that are, of course, just as easily explained by the colonial past. However, it's just as much indicative that those common elements still persist: for example, the traditional pleas in criminal judicial proceedings are either "guilty" or "innocent", and not the typical Anglo-Saxon "guilty" or "not guilty" (aside from "no contest") forms.

So, with these examples I'm only illustrating why I think that to assert that it's "just" (or even "mostly") a language issue is a grave misrepresentation of the reality.

Now, what I have done is to expand from a narrow US-centric approach (where the "cosmology" of Spanish speakers is reflected) to a far more broad view on "the Spanish speaking world".

Without getting into refined thoughts concerning the specifics of the so-called "Hispanic" versus "Latino" discussion (a different and potentially most contentious can of worms), you're absolutely right in that there are differences between, say, Florida (with its strong Cuban influences), California (where Mexicans are much more noticeable), New York (where it's not uncommon to run into people from Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic) or one of the Gulf states (where many people live and work from Central America, such as El Salvador). Now, Spaniards in the US are much more few and far in between - noting myself as such an exception.

Still, and as much as the Spanish language issue is becoming a readily exploited issue for narrow politically partisan purposes I think it's still worth to note that the numbers of native Spanish speakers in the US amount to a by all means respectable 40 million; for example, Spain has "only" 44 million inhabitants. The Spanish speakers in the US could, hypothetically, make up quite a populous virtual country - that's my minor point in this paragraph.

But my overarching point here is that it is both absurd and objectionable to assert that there is little beyond "language and culture" as common factors that bind countries where Spanish is (predominantly) spoken.

Now, is it reasonable to assert that there are painful pangs of the brutal colonial past? Is it reasonable to state that that past causes many people to reject references to Spain, such as for example with the term "Hispanic"? Evidently.

But let's not let a necessary exercise in healthy (!) historic revisionism get in the way of simple truisms. As much as the use of Spanish as an "official" language is an artifact, illustrated by efforts to place so-called "co-official" languages on equal official footing in many Spanish speaking countries (something that also happened in Spain, where Galician, Basque and Catalan have become co-official), it is just as silly to blindly reject anything related to Spanish, as is the corollary opposite, namely embracing outdated and untenable notions of the "Madre Patria" as a contemporary desideratum.

I think there's lots of room to engage in critical review, but it's in my opinion ridiculous, ineffectual and counterproductive to insinuate that there's a somehow significant "debate" going on about "Spanishness" (or "Portugueseness" for that matter, since I mentioned Brazil and Portugal). Whomever denies the strong, common, and multi-tiered connections between and among all Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries, is just as far off-base as the occasional idiot advocating for some "Pan-Hispanic" revival (usually couched in political yearnings to the "good old" days of mass murderers like Franco and Pinochet).

There is, in other words, nothing to debate about whether manifold common ties exist; they do.

Whether it is "easy" to find common ground in contemporary socio-political issues is another topic altogether. In that regard, I'd like to point out that there's just as much effort among xenophobic elements (i.e., not necessarily people who are "anti-Spanish" per se, but "anti-foreigner") to rake up artificial controversy as there are tensions among Spanish speaking communities within the US due to factors that far from always attributable to the bloody and dark past of Spain in the Americas. As one outstanding example I could point to the anti-Castrista crowd in Florida, that starkly contrasts with (for example) many in the expatriate Mexican community in the US; differences and tensions there have much, much more to do with contemporary US-specific politics, than with the more distant remnants of Spanish-based (from Spain) History.

Frankly, I abhor platitudes that appeal to some bland "brotherhood" of Spanish speakers in this world about as much as I detest beauty pageants announcing their personal ideal of world peace. Having said that, I have no reason whatsoever to embrace the exact opposite, namely a view of strongly compartmentalized and inherently somehow incompatible Spanish speaking countries.

Oh by the way - all this reminds that I'll have to finish this thing sometime soon - it's the first of several "panel pieces" I'm writing on what I refer to as "Frankenspanish", or: the pursuit of either an artificially homogenized "culture" or the flat out denial of significant common elements altogether.

Anyway... I look forward to seeing this discussion develop.